Remembering When Holden Ford Came Close to Breaking Bad in Mindhunter

TV can sometimes be a massive game of follow-the-leader, with one hit show inspiring numerous others to follow its lead. In the 2010s, Breaking Bad took the antihero trend that began with The Sopranos and pushed it further, tracking its main character from a seemingly mild-mannered high school teacher to ruthless drug lord. I was reminded of the trendiness of that kind of character development in my Mindhunter rewatch, as the first season approached its finale and Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) really looked like he was headed towards his own breaking-bad moment.

The foreshadowing was there in the first eight episodes, as Ford grew increasingly bolder and unbothered in his interrogation tactics. He got away with gifting Jerry Brudos a woman's shoe without much more than a talking-to from Wendy (Anna Torv). His instincts had helped solve the murder case in Altoona, whether or not the local prosecutor was able to pursue a satisfying conviction. He got results, you stupid chief!

Observing Ford through the eyes of his colleagues, though, the signs were troubling. While still supporting his partner, Tench (Holt McCallany) couldn't stomach the way Ford so willingly cozied up to these mass murderers without feeling so much as a twinge of internal conflict afterwards. This tension reaches its apex in the final two episodes of Season 1, starting with Tench and Ford's interview of notorious spree killer Richard Speck. This is the biggest "get" for the Behavioral Science Unit so far, a designation that is troubling in and of itself. (As Wendy points out a few episodes later, seeking out "celebrity" killers like Speck, David Berkowitz, and Charles Manson throws out their methodology in order to, essentially, chase clout.)

Getting a Speck interview is basically prom night for Ford, and he plans on going all the way. In this case it means getting down in the misogynist muck with Speck and provoking him with language like "four ripe c*nts." The language is so odious and beyond the pale that it's more than just Tench who gets turned off. Speck himself seems to blanch at the language coming from this fresh-faced Fed. Back at home, Debbie (Hannah Gross) is starting to see Holden in a different light too, especially after the principal's wife from a previous episode tracks him down to tell him how the cloud of suspicion he helped raise about her child-tickling husband has ruined their lives.

But the more revolted everybody else gets, the cockier Ford becomes. This gets even worse after he helps solve a Georgia murder, in part because he turns off the tape recorder in interrogation and once again uses the misogynist language of the killer to get into his head and manipulate him into a confession. The local cops look at Ford like he's a magician and spend an evening gassing him up. When his exploits wind up in the local newspaper the next day, both Tench and Wendy see this as a big problem for the BCU, while Ford seems chuffed by the attention.

When internal affairs starts poking into Ford's tactics in the Speck interview, Ford starts to look even more like a villain, as he directs junior agent Gregg Smith to redact the transcript and hide the original tape. While being interrogated by the internal affairs investigators, Ford can't help but sound like the confident monsters he's been interviewing. He calls out their "feeble" interrogation tactics, then walks out, claiming "The only mistake I ever made was ever doubting myself."

This is villain behavior! And it makes you start to wonder how well Ford fits the profile of the killers they're profiling. "They have emotions," Wendy said to Ford several episodes ago, "they just don't believe that other people have them." That's starting to sound like the way Ford is constantly disregarding Tench and Wendy's reactions to him. We've seen that he's sexually inexperienced compared to his partners (Debbie specifically), and sexual inadequacy is constantly brought up as part of the killers' profiles. He told the story of his mom walking in on him while masturbating in order to find common ground with Brudos. He's so unbothered by these killers and the descriptions of their crimes that he slides easily into approximating their toxic mindsets.

In this way, I started to think of Mindhunter as a show in dialogue with Hannibal, which had aired a few years earlier and which reveled in turning its lead character from a criminal investigator to someone in thrall to the psychopath he's hunting. Have we been watching the origin of a serial killer this whole time?

Obviously no, having watched the series before, but it's amazing how well Fincher and his team guide the audience into thinking it anyway. It's a notion that hangs heavy in the air as Ford goes to meet Ed Kemper in the hospital. Kemper's attempted suicide and designated Ford as his medical contact, the latest and most extreme in a series of overtures Kemper has made to get Ford to contact him. Love letters, if you will. In the hospital, without any guards to watch over them, Kemper shows Ford the resulting scar, a gesture of intimacy. Fincher, who directs the episode, plays it very much like a seduction, his camera fixed on Kemper's hulking body and the chains on his legs that might not be able to hold him back from… what exactly? Touching Holden? Killing him? An affect-less Kemper recalls how in his whole life no one ever wanted to interact with him (implying Holden is the exception) and that he killed those girls because it was the only way he could have them. This is a dance, a seduction, as Hannibal was, and there's a second where you're not 100% sure Kemper isn't going to kiss him.

Brought to the brink, as close to his object of fascination as he's ever going to be, this would be the moment for Ford to break bad, to show some kind of genuine affinity with Kemper and leave the audience chilled to the bone heading into Season 2. Instead, the moment becomes too intense for him. As Kemper pulls him into an embrace, a terrified Ford has a panic attack, running out into the halls and collapsing. We'll see in the following episodes that he ends up briefly in a psych ward and might have a panic disorder. But the moment when it seemed like Ford might be the monster lurking in plain sight has passed.

It's significant that we get a BTK scene in the finale after Holden's panic attack. Kemper was ultimately too much for Holden to take. Is BTK similarly the killer they won't be able to stop? Something awful is coming in Season 2.

Those first few episodes of Season 2 are a bit of a comedown from the intensity of the Season 1 finale, though we are introduced to Michael Cerveris as the new authority figure at the BSU. Shepard (Cotter Smith) is "retiring," though he reveals to Ford that he's being forced out in retaliation for Ford's scandal with the Speck interview. Shepard dresses down Ford as a "vainglorious little sh*t," provoking another panic attack, clearing the way for Cerveris' Ted Gunn to play the benevolent, supportive boss, albeit one whose generosity seems to hide an agenda of his own.

Up next: Season 2 unveils its overarching story about the Atlanta Child Murders, and Ford's vanity takes a different shape.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.